Perfecting every aspect of your brand’s online presence should be a constant pursuit. This goal may not be permanently attainable – changes have to be made from time to time – but it is a worthwhile endeavor that ensures your website is performing well. One of the biggest ways that brands promote and improve visibility is through search engine optimization, which boosts the amount of organic traffic coming to websites via search engines. Unfortunately, SEO is a big field and there are many landmines scattered across it. Today, we’ll review how you may be screwing up your SEO performance by making some bad decisions.

Optimizing with Desktop in Mind

Most website development, testing and content creation is done via a traditional computer. Whether you’re writing from a desktop or optimizing via a laptop, traditional devices may provide a false sense of accomplishment when evaluating results. In addition to that, various forms of SEO rely increasingly on the mobile user experience as opposed to desktop and laptop devices. This means you might be pinging noise in terms of design improvements or SEO tweaks that won’t actually improve user experience for most visitors.

Always keep in mind that the majority of your visitors are likely on mobile devices. Additionally, search engines penalize websites that are not optimized for a mobile experience. If you’re going to pick one form of optimization to focus on, then it should definitely be mobile.

Playing Around with Links

All too often, people simultaneously overestimate and underestimate the value of links in building credible influence in search engines. How can this be? Well, it depends on which particular links  are being discussed.

In the case of overvaluing links, some webmasters are overzealous in disavowing links that they believe could be harmful – even without any concrete evidence to suggest so. The number of links pointing to your site, even if they do not provide immediate or obvious value, can be beneficial in establishing your website as credible. Just because a link might look a bit suspicious doesn’t mean you automatically need to disavow.

Likewise, some SEO enthusiasts have all but written off the pursuance of backlinks as if they are no longer immensely valuable. While the nature of earning links – and the value they provide – has shifted over the years, a website that merely serves up content without building links is pinging noise at search engines.

Focusing on Keywords

Keyword usage is still one important aspect of search engine optimization. As search engines need to analyze the context of each piece of content and every page, keywords help them determine what each page is about. Unfortunately, some make the mistake of delving too deep into the usage of keywords, thereby rendering their content useless in the pursuit of proper SEO.

Search engines can recognize when content has been over-optimized, with excessive use of keywords being one of the most common examples.  By making sure to use a variety of related keywords – but not too many or any one keyword too many times – you can avoid having Google and others enact penalties against your website.

As countless websites continue to compete for attention, more and more websites rely on solid SEO foundations to be successful. Optimizations involving links, keywords and mobile devices are among the most common ways people screw up when attempting to improve SEO. You’re now aware of which examples to avoid, so you’ll be better equipped to succeed in SERPs in the future.